Completely ban illegal wildlife trade! What are the wild animals in our country?

Human beings and nature share a shared future. Protecting wild animals is protecting humans themselves. There will be no harm if there is no buying and selling. Today, the 16th session of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress held its first plenary session in Beijing on the morning of the 24th, and the draft decision on a comprehensive ban on illegal wildlife trade was submitted for deliberation. So, what are the wild animals in our country?

Completely ban illegal wildlife trade! What are the wild animals in our country?

An introduction to the comprehensive ban on illegal wildlife trade!

The 16th session of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress held its first plenary session in Beijing on the morning of the 24th. A draft decision on comprehensively banning illegal wildlife trade, eradicating the bad habit of eating wild animals, and effectively protecting the lives, health and safety of the people has been submitted for deliberation. The draft decision consists of 8 articles. The draft focuses on the prominent problem of excessive consumption of wild animals. Its purpose is to comprehensively ban the consumption of wild animals and crack down on illegal wildlife trade before relevant laws are amended, so as to provide strong legislative guarantees for maintaining public health and ecological security and protecting the lives, health and safety of the people.

What are the wild animals?

1. Giant Panda

Giant panda (scientific name: Ailuropoda melanoleuca): the only mammal belonging to the order Carnivora, family Ursidae, subfamily Ailuropodinae and genus Ailuropoda, with a head and body length of 1.2-1.8 meters and a tail length of 10-12 centimeters. It weighs 80-120 kg and can weigh up to 180 kg. Its body color is black and white. It has round cheeks, big dark circles under its eyes, a chubby body, a signature pigeon-toed gait, and claws as sharp as scalpels. It is one of the cutest animals in the world.

The giant panda has lived on Earth for at least 8 million years. It is known as the "living fossil" and "China's national treasure", the image ambassador of the World Wildlife Fund, and is a flagship species for the conservation of biodiversity in the world. According to the third national survey of giant panda wild populations, there are less than 1,600 wild giant pandas in the world, and they are China's first-class protected animals.

As of October 2011, there were 333 captive giant pandas in the country. Giant pandas were originally carnivores, but after evolution, 99% of their food has become bamboo. However, their teeth and digestive tract remain the same, and they are still classified as Carnivora. When they get angry, they are as dangerous as other bear species. The life span of giant pandas in the wild is 18-20 years, and in captivity they can live to over 30 years.

2. South China Tiger

The scientific name of the South China tiger is Panthera tigris Amoyensis (Xiamen tiger, South China tiger). It was listed in Appendix I of the CITES Convention in 1981. Also known as the "Chinese tiger", the South China tiger has a round head, short ears, thick and powerful limbs, a long tail, a chest and abdomen with a lot of milky white, and an orange-yellow body covered with black horizontal stripes. There are short and narrow stripes on its fur. The spacing between the stripes is larger than that of the Bengal tiger and Siberian tiger. Diamond-shaped patterns often appear on the sides of the body. It is smaller in size among the subspecies of tigers.

The South China tiger feeds on herbivorous animals such as wild boars, deer, and roe deer. It is one of China's top ten endangered animals and a national first-class protected animal. It is listed as critically endangered on the Red Species List and is extinct in the wild.

3. Chinese sturgeon

Chinese sturgeon (scientific name: Acipenser sinensis): The average body length is about 40 cm, the maximum length is 130 cm, and the maximum weight is up to 600 kg. [1] The body is fusiform, with a pointed head and a long snout. There are four barbels in front of the mouth, which is located on the ventral side. The mouth is elastic and can be stretched into a cylindrical shape. The body is covered with five rows of large and hard bony scales, one row on the dorsal side, and two rows on the sides and ventral side.

Sturgeon is a rare ancient fish left over from the Mesozoic Era 150 million years ago. It is between cartilage and bone, with a generally reduced degree of skeletal ossification. The central axis is an unossified elastic notochord, without vertebrae, and most of the cartilaginous shell along with the skull is not ossified. The caudal fin is crooked, the paired fins have a broad base, and the dorsal fin and anal fin are opposite. The pelvic fins are located in front of the dorsal fin, the base of the fins and tail fin has spinous scales, the intestine has spiral valves, the anus and cloaca are located near the base of the pelvic fins, and the opening of the oviduct is far away from the ovaries.

4. Wild Yak

The wild yak (Latin name: Bos mutus) is the wild counterpart of the domestic yak. ​​It has strong limbs and is covered with long hair. The hair on its chest and abdomen almost hangs down to the ground to protect it from wind and rain. It has fleshy teeth on its tongue and is ferocious and good at fighting. It is a typical alpine animal, extremely cold-resistant, a unique breed of cattle on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and a first-class protected animal in the country.

It inhabits alpine meadow areas at an altitude of 3000 to 6000 meters, various environments such as remote alpine peaks, intermountain basins, alpine grasslands, alpine desert grasslands, etc. It is a herbivore and is distributed in southern Xinjiang, Qinghai, Tibet, northwestern Gansu and western Sichuan.

5. Scaly-scaly merganser

The Chinese merganser (scientific name: Mergus squamatus) is a bird of the genus Merganser in the family Anatidae. Its common name is the Scaly-winged Merganser and it is endemic to China. The beak is flattened laterally with a pointed front end, which is different from the flat beaks of other species in the Anatidae family. Mouth and legs are red. The male duck has a black head and upper back, white lower back, waist and tail coverts; there are white wing mirrors on the wings; the long feathers on the top of the head extend back to form a double crest. There are black fish-scale markings on the flank feathers.

Found in fast-flowing rivers in forested areas and sometimes in open lakes. In pairs or family groups. Dive to hunt fish. It is distributed in Siberia and Heilongjiang, Jilin, Hebei, and south of the Yangtze River in mainland China. It mainly inhabits streams, valleys, meadows, ponds and grasslands in broad-leaved forests or mixed coniferous and broad-leaved forests. The type locality of this species is China.

As the name suggests, wild animals are animals that grow and reproduce in the wild environment. Generally speaking, they have the following characteristics: they can survive independently in the wild, that is, they do not rely on external factors (such as human power) to survive, and they also have population and exclusivity.